Each week The Rendon Group’s media analysts will focus on a different continent and a different issue affecting that continent. As always, we remain available to answer any questions you may have and to provide additional information upon request. For more information regarding The Rendon Group’s products and services, please contact us at Alert@Rendon.com or +1-202-745-4900.

This week’s snapshot will focus on allegations against Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and the second most powerful member of the regime. Investigations by U.S. officials have linked Cabello and other prominent Venezuelan officials to cocaine trafficking and money laundering, according to a May 18 report by the Wall Street Journal.

Samples of Third Party Validators regarding allegations against Diosdado Cabello

Bruce Bagley, University of Maryland drug expert

“Maduro and Cabello need one another…The stability of the government hangs on the continued support from the army, and there’s so much corruption in the Venezuelan military, that they know that if they don’t hang together, they will be either tried by a new government or extradited.”

“Whether it’s true or not, this study has been heard many times in Venezuela…It may have an impact among the elites, but the people on the street can’t tell the difference between The Wall Street Journal and some obscure website where they may have read this in the past.”

“I don’t see how a DEA report involving him with drug smuggling could affect his position [in Venezuela], just like it didn’t happen with other army officers that the United States singled out as drug lords in Venezuela.”

Samples of open source research conducted by TRG analysts related to allegations against Diosdado Cabello

1.Venezuelan Officials Suspected of Turning Country into Global Cocaine Hub

Media: The Wall Street Journal

Byline: Jose de Cordoba and Juan Forero

Date: 18 May 2015

U.S. prosecutors are investigating several high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including the president of the country’s congress, on suspicion that they have turned the country into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the probes.

An elite unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington and federal prosecutors in New York and Miami are building cases using evidence provided by former cocaine traffickers, informants who were once close to top Venezuelan officials and defectors from the Venezuelan military, these people say.

4.UPDATE: Maduro says anyone messing with Diosdado Cabello is messing with him

Media: EFE (Spain)

Byline: N/A

Date: 20 May 2015

Caracas May 20 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that anyone messing with National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello is messing with him, after an article in a U.S. newspaper alleged Cabello is being investigated in the United States for links to drug-trafficking.

May 20–There has been a lot of excitement among critics of Venezuela’s authoritarian populist government about new reports confirming that U.S. authorities are investigating Venezuela’s No. 2 official on drug trafficking charges, but — unfortunately — the news will have very little political impact in that country.

6.UPDATE: Chavists band together to defend Venezuelan parliament head Diosdado Cabello

Media: EFE (Spain)

Byline: Indira Guerrero

Date: 21 May 2015

Caracas, May 21 (EFE).- Chavists have launched a collective defense campaign against international news reports implicating Diosdado Cabello, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, in drug-trafficking and organized crime networks.